Ganger

My first game I pushed up too far and ended up with my leader and both champions down on the ground seriously injured, now in hindsight I should probably have bottled a turn or two previously but bottled voluntarily then and as it happened all rolled fine, only one rolled permanent injury, and he was back next game, but could have been worse, much worse.

If I'd played on however, chances are it would be permanent injuries on more of them, losing income or even a character very early in the campaign.

Juve

Agreed - I think it should be expected for most players to bottle early in their first few games. One friend in this campaign who didn't had a ganger die after some bad luck in his first game, sticking around too long and taking too many casualties.

Gang Champion

Always an issue of balance. REP is also important to get up early for that advantage of a third champion (and access to hanger ons). You won't get this unless you win your games, which mostly is down to luck with scenarios or capitalising on your opponents misstakes. Sometimes this means taking risks, but yes, one should know what it's worth to risk.

Ganger

Also note, that in the updated scenarios in the gang leader's accessories pack (those form the rule book and GW1), you loose the scenario when you bottle out voluntarily and flee (I'm sure this will be updated for the other scenarios, too). The other player gets all the rewards as if they had achieved them and the they win scenario at stake in a dominion campaign. Hence, you have to think twice before bottling out...

Ganger

Agreed - I think it should be expected for most players to bottle early in their first few games. One friend in this campaign who didn't had a ganger die after some bad luck in his first game, sticking around too long and taking too many casualties.

Ganger

We had the early bottle discussion quite often in our group and came to the following conclusion: If you bottle early often, you will get richer quite fast. You will have all the toys and boys, great builds and everything. But not much joy when it comes down to playtime.
You play this game to play a game, not to have an arms race on paper, at least in my opinion.

Dominion Campain makes things better, as you do not get money from champions (thus no botteling if one goes down) but from territories and you are going to fight on as long as possible if someone wants to grab your money machine and you will loose it if you bottle.

Juve

Also note, that in the updated scenarios in the gang leader's accessories pack (those form the rule book and GW1), you loose the scenario when you bottle out voluntarily and flee (I'm sure this will be updated for the other scenarios, too). The other player gets all the rewards as if they had achieved them and the they win scenario at stake in a dominion campaign. Hence, you have to think twice before bottling out...

Can you point to me where that rule is? I'm desperately looking for it and can't find it. We played ambush yesterday, and the attacker bottled after destroying the objective, preventing me from taking half of his gang OOA, and thus winning the scenario even though he was getting beat, using bottle as a way to run faster.

Gang Champion

Can you point to me where that rule is? I'm desperately looking for it and can't find it. We played ambush yesterday, and the attacker bottled after destroying the objective, preventing me from taking half of his gang OOA, and thus winning the scenario even though he was getting beat, using bottle as a way to run faster.

Ganger

In sabotage, when the defender bottles voluntarily, the attacker automatically wins and the objective counts as being destroeyed. In any other case: The attacker wins when the objective is destroyed and fewer than half of their have been taken OOA. The defender wins if the objective is not destroyed. Any other resulkt is a draw. Recall that a fighter that flees after biottling counts as having been taken OOA. Hence, if the attacker voluntarily bottles more than half of their Crew are OOA and they cannot win. In this scenario, however, they can take flight which only counts as OOA concerning bottel tests.

Ganger

Can you point to me where that rule is? I'm desperately looking for it and can't find it. We played ambush yesterday, and the attacker bottled after destroying the objective, preventing me from taking half of his gang OOA, and thus winning the scenario even though he was getting beat, using bottle as a way to run faster.

Juve

Ganger

I just wound up bottling after a single turn of sentry movement in my first campaign game, a Sabotage match against a Chaos Cult gang with about 195 (yes, my mistake, I should have kept the extra 5 credits in the bank for the second extra card) Gang Rating on me.

Unfortunately, I didn't pay close enough attention during setup, and the Cult player managed to place a few 40k-style ruined buildings in the corners of the battlefield (and thus in his deployment zone) which let him deploy a group with an Overseer leader (with cult icon!), heavy stubber and two long las with direct line of sight down to the objective; this meant he could destroy the objective virtually at will with one, or at most two, rounds of shooting, had enough of his gang deployed in hard cover virtually on the table edge that he could vacate almost immediately once the objective was down, and had enough gangers on the board (13, including a Chaos Spawn, vs my five sentries and d6-per-end-phase reinforcements) that I would have to OOA 7 fighters while massively outnumbered and outgunned, all before he decided he was done farming XP and left the board, in order to simply force a draw.

I tried to convince myself it was worth playing, but as part of a campaign, it really, really wasn't; setting aside the issues with setup, the best I could hope for would be to inflict significant injuries that would make another gang's next game against him easier at the likely cost of far more significant injuries on my part (an instinct that proved correct, as his chosen cards for the mission were the Cawdor tactics* that light a piece of terrain on fire and give the player's weapons Blaze for a round). It wasn't fun (not that a game tilted that far would have been either) but it made tactical sense to bottle immediately, the second it was an option, so I could slink away with a lost territory and a net loss of 1 rep instead of giving him at least 4 XP on an already dangerous Disciple for blowing up the objective.

(FWIW, my extra card was also massively useless- in addition to Click and Blackout, which I could only play to dampen enemy shooting once the alarm had already been raised, most likely by a group activation salvo that destroyed the objective before I could react, I drew Frag Trap, which served no purpose other than potentially turning one of my sentries into a walking bomb.)

*in our campaign we're letting our two Cult gangs use the tactics cards of the gangs they count as for Territory purposes

Gang Champion

He's not allowed to use Cawdor tactic cards unless you've house ruled it.

Apart from that it sounds quite sour and whilst I'm not against 'unfair' play per se I think that it should at least be possible to be able to bite back a little. Such as that you together put up terrain so that you can't target for the sabotage so that it's impossible to get los to it first turn without moving. This is from my own experience and even being the attacker it's much more fun if you have to work for it a bit. And if you're already allowing cult gangs to use house specific cards it seems like you're already allowing house rules.

Ganger

We’ve house ruled card access for our Chaos and Genestealer Cult players to give them the same set of options other players are working with; that wasn’t really my issue.

But yeah, the first turn LoS thing sucks- I should have caught it during our terrain setup, which was alternating in the standard rulebook practice, but I think I also didn’t expect it because it had been such an utter debacle the last time it happened (also to me) in a skirmish game of Sabotage, where the game was over on the first activation. I’m taking it on the chin this time but I’m going to be making a maze of the tallest buildings I can get my hands on around the objective next time it happens.

It’s also on a table that’s very much built for 40k vs Necromunda- these were those half-open style of ruins where two walls are missing but the remaining two provide hard cover for a three-tiered emplacement, which is one thing to shift when you’ve got tanks but another entirely when you’re rocking up with...checks notes...two autoguns, a shotgun, a long rifle and dual stub guns, and even if a d6 reinforcement roll comes up average or better and they all show up where they need to be, they’ll likely be outnumbered regardless and get Seriously Injured to a man from a 4-fighter group activation unless they get priority.

(Got to admit, I’m also moderately salty that I paid our Orlock player for priority in what turned out to be a sentry mission >_<)